Our Story
Ortholove is the brainchild of Jon Bloy and David Plane, two Essex lads passionate about quality products, exceptional customer service, and more importantly making a difference.
Jon was born in Wickford, Essex, UK in the 1970’s. His mum died when he was 7 and so was brought up by his father who was a farmer and market trader. After a stint as a stockbroker at the age of 17, he moved into sales for a large American scientific product design company, before changing into the medical devices sector. It was there, and in the noughties that he met, David, a fellow Essex boy, born in Harlow, son to a newspaper printer. After going to University in Loughborough he moved into medical device sales because, just like Jon, he was not only driven but really wanted to make a difference. The two climbed the ranks of various large medical device companies before starting their own medical device sales and distribution business in 2013. Over the next five years they won awards for building one of the fastest growing businesses in the medical device sales industry and Jon, the hands-on doer, and Dave the techy thinker, built a huge network of key opinion leaders in the healthcare space.
It became clear to them that every clinician they spoke to was recommend products to their patients almost every day, such as splints, supports, insoles and walking aids, but then patients would then spend ages searching for the products on Internet search engines often finding a range of products at different price points and of varying quality and usefulness.
This disorganised process troubled the lads but it was a serendipitous conversation with Adi, a posture and Pilates expert that led to the birth of their concept. Adi had developed back pain after her first pregnancy and although spent her days teaching her clients exercises to help back pain, realised that they would spent 8-10 hours in their beds twisting and turning, putting stresses and strains on their skeleton, and it was this that was the real problem. She explained to David and Jon her ideas for a new mattress which was set to reinvent the orthopaedic mattress industry. Her second idea was a body pillow that could help achieve the perfect night’s sleep and even more impressive, was that it had the potential to cure snoring. She had spent months researching her ideas with numerous orthopaedic experts but was lacking a route to taking the ideas forwards. She called her ideas “the OrthoLove Mattress and Body Pillow”
This was the eureka moment for Jon and David, as they realised these were exactly the sort of brilliant ideas they had the knowhow and expertise to make into real products and available to benefit patients. They agreed to buy the Ortholove name and in return to help Adi make her ideas a reality.
OrthoLove was born, products recommended by experts that patients love.